


a look back

by lucienna



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mei Is Justifiably Angry, not super romantic but like please interpret them as lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-24 20:14:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16182371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucienna/pseuds/lucienna
Summary: Mei takes a walk down memory lane in the cold, Antarctic north. Luckily, Fareeha waits at the end.





	a look back

**Author's Note:**

> made this for a zine that didn't work out, very glad it's finally seeing the light of day!

Mei walks through the halls of the Antarctic base, clutching her parka to her chest. They’re much colder than when she woke up - side effect of her using all the emergency generator power to build her ice gun. Snowball flits around her head, making little buzzing noises. Besides the echoes of her boots as she makes her way down the hall, it’s the only sound to fill the silent hallway. 

 

She’ll admit, it makes her nervous to walk down these halls herself. Realistically, there’s nothing here to hurt her, but still. They’re so unnervingly quiet, no hum of devices in any room, gathering data, no tvs blaring the latest news, nothing like any functioning science base.

 

Of course, this  _ isn’t  _ a functioning science base, but Mei doesn’t really like to think about that. Fareeha had offered to come in with her, but Mei had refused, saying that it was already so much trouble for Fareeha to fly her here and Mei could easily do this herself, it was fine. Considering she had four large black bags with her and some very heavy items to put in them, she probably could have used the help. But Mei wasn’t sure she could handle anyone from Overwatch being around when she did this. 

 

It wasn’t Fareeha’s fault. She hadn’t even been part of the organization at the time. It was everyone else’s fault, really - the UN people who cut funding to the sciences without actually checking what they were cutting funding  _ for _ , the Overwatch officials who shunted the papers of the ecopoint scientists into a back room and never checked them and ignored those who asked where they had gone, the governments who paid the other scientists’ families hush money to get them to shut up and not ask questions. But Fareeha  _ was _ the only one around with a connection to Overwatch, and Mei was fairly worried she’d lash out. 

 

She was even more glad about telling Fareeha to stay back, after the wave of anger and sorrow that rushed over her as she walked into the cryostasis room.

 

When she had left, she had left the bodies alone, not looking in the chambers again - partially because she intended to come back and give them proper burials, and they’d stay better preserved in the still-cold chambers, and partially because she couldn’t handle it. She had had to stay strong. Not think about it. Only focus on getting out of there, back to civilization. Now, however……now she thought about it. Stared right into the box, she could’ve made eye contact with the woman inside if she had been awake. 

 

Now? She feels...numb, honestly. After the initial wave of sadness, looking into the chamber doesn’t affect her as much as she thought it would. Maybe she’d pushed it down for too long, since she had gotten back to Overwatch (six months?), maybe all those years frozen had frozen her heart a little too. 

 

And yet, she still can’t bring herself to open the chamber. Once she opens it, she has to finish what she’s started by coming here - if you open the airtight chamber, then the body’s exposed to air instead of being locked in cold, and then soon it’ll start to decompose and Mei  _ really  _ does not want that. It’s nice for now to let it sit there. Pretending that the chambers worked, and her fellow scientists just needed a little more time than she did to wake up (funny, she was always the heaviest sleeper), and any second they’ll get up and laugh because “Mei wanted to go to sleep the least, and look, she woke up first!”

 

Snowball floats around her, making little robot noises. It nuzzles up to her neck and stays there, warming her shoulder. She reaches a hand out to stroke it absentmindedly, glancing behind her at the table at the center of the room. The hot chocolate mugs she put on it months are still sitting there, covered in ice crystals. She picks one up, and immediately puts it down, shaking the frost off her hand.

 

“I feel like I should put these back in the kitchen….”

 

Snowball flies up right in front of her face. The robot can’t display that emotions on its little face, but she feels like she can understand the one it’s giving now -  _ you’re avoiding this. _ She sighs.

 

“You’re right. Let’s go.” 

 

She purses her mouth and pulls open the first chamber door. Somehow it seems a lot more real when there’s an actual person right there in front of her. Mei takes a deep breath. “It’s okay now. I’m taking you guys home.”

 

-

 

A crackle comes over the Overwatch jet’s intercom. “Fareeha?”

 

Fareeha’s sitting inside the parked plane, video on so she can see Mei. The scientist’s standing on the outside, two large black bags standing next to her, and Fareeha can see Mei’s little robot dragging two more attached to it to stand next to her. She rushes down the stairs off the jet. 

 

“All good?” 

 

Mei nods, but Fareeha can see tears beginning to form in the corners of her eyes. Mei tries to wipe them off with her mitten, but the mitten’s covered in frost, and so she just gets ice all over her glasses and then her tears start freezing and eventually Fareeha just walks over and hugs her.

 

Mei sniffles. “It’s real now. And it’s Overwatch’s fault…...I don’t want to go back. I want to be mad at everyone….I want to be mad at you……..but you all don’t deserve that. You were just doing your jobs….” She hiccups. “Just doing your jobs, like we were…..”

 

“You have a right to be angry.” Fareeha says, pulling back from the hug. Her eyes suddenly seem far away. “No one should ever leave a comrade behind. And that’s what Overwatch did to you.”

 

Mei stares at her for a moment, and then nods. “But there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

 

“No, there’s not.” Fareeha looks down at the bags. “We can fix it a little, though.”

 

She reaches for one of them, and then hesitates, looking back up at Mei. 

 

“May I?” 

 

Mei nods, giving her a small smile, as they both pick up one end of the bag, Snowball rushing over to latch onto the middle.

 

“We don’t have to go straight back,” Fareeha tells her. “Winston gave me extra gas….especially if you don’t want them buried at Overwatch headquarters. We can go wherever you want.”

 

Mei’s smile widens, just a little. “Maybe we should go do it in the Arctic.”

 

Fareeha laughs, and so does Mei. It echoes around the quiet icy landscape, back through the door of the now truly empty science base, and for a moment you’d think you could hear laughter from years ago echoing back.

 

The plane takes off, and this time, Mei allows herself to look back. It’s a lovely view.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are appreciated:D
> 
> tumblr: [@mercyofficial](https://mercyofficial.tumblr.com/)  
> twitter: [@astraldva](https://twitter.com/astraldva)


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